I was going to write a whole long screed about the Greyhound Hotel
finally closing (again) but going through my photos and other reports of
gigs I had already written I thought I would just quote from them as it
would be better.

The Starliners & Cabana Smoothie Karaoke

26/5/01

Fred Negro and Steve Prictor were
hosting, which was great as Fred
is probably one of the most entertaining musicians I’ve seen perform
(it has nothing to do do with his singing I can tell you.) Steve had a
few good tricks also, like trying to do a trombone solo during one
of the acts and stuffing himself.

(First record of a gig I can find at this establishment)

Twits Karaoke

The first time I had seen the Twits, they were banned from the venue for
three years after the gig.

Karaoke 2002ish

Sticks a 100 year old cantankerous old fart
who gets around with two walking sticks – having his sticks taken off
him and Fred using them to have
a wank, then Fred and Steve setting them on fire and losing them, which
led to them trying to replace them with a horsey on a stick and a
retractable light saber.

Jesse Bates’ Birthday

As I was leaving the X gig at the
Greyhound on Friday night, I ran into Jesse Bates who invited me to his
birthday that Sunday. I have seen him in quite a few bands around the
place so I decided to go after the Karaoke Oscars.There were heaps of people there by the time I arrived and Jesse and co
were playing up a storm in the lounge room. People from several of the
bands that he drummed in played and other people joined in as they felt
like it.Steve Prictor kissed my cheek, yuk! It was very hot in the main room so
I went out to the back yard occasionally and talked to one of the bar
staff from my local and his friends.I left a bit after 1am, but I am sure the party went on late until the
night or at least until the police came. It was great to get the chance
to go and I will try to get to more of Jesse’s gigs in the future.

Crackwhore, Kamikaze, Killerbirds

Kamikaze…BY CHRIST! I’ve photographed
over 600 bands and other performers in my five years of going to see
bands. Kamikaze, while not the worst band I have seen, are getting
pretty close. Far too much fucking around for my liking including two of
the members asking for drugs from the audience while they were meant to
be playing. I did see them in Adelaide and they were a lot better then.
Far too loud as I was sick the next day just from the noise. I had to
bugger off outside during the middle of the set.

On walking outside “YEP!
They are definitely banned!”

“Are you going to ban
them?”

“WHY BOTHER!”

What a debacle! I CANNOT ABIDE band’s trashing other people’s
equipment

Me singing Ghostbusters August 2008

HOSS

SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! And that was my
introduction to Imperial Leatherman during their sound check, better get
drunk I thought. Thankfully they turned out to be fairly good and
something I wouldn’t go to see normally. Certainly not a band you would
expect at the Greyhound as they hardly ever have instrumental bands play
in the front bar.

HOSS

Jamieson’s and whisky’s lined up for Joel. People just kept giving them to
him

Runaway Boys, Greasy Hawaiians, Flyin’ Saucers, Kooky Karaoke

Supposedly the karaoke was meant to go
until 1am, but the licence application hadn’t been approved so they had
to cut it off and kick everyone out at 12am. “Free Beer at the Prince!”
was the cry and everyone went outside. The last I saw of Johnny Kicks
was his arse hanging out the cab window.

I do like a movie that has the audacity to start you off in the middle of action, something this movie does in spades before it even tells you who the main characters are with a crazy chase across the rooftops with people firing and a resistance fighter being cornered and trying to be talked into surrendering by Captain of the Japanese police in Korea Lee Jung-Chool (Sang Kang Ho).

While his character’s motives may seem murky at the start, it gradually becomes clear he is actually trying to help the resistance while still appearing to do his job. This is made much harder when his superiors decide to give him a Japanese partner Hashimoto (Um Tae-Goo) who goes full attack dog and scares off the group.

The resistance fighters are a varied group and it is difficult to follow all the names at times. I do recognise some of them from other Korean movies though and they do play off each other well as some of them are working on their own agendas.
The differences in Lee Jung-Chool and Hashimoto’s approaches are most apparent when they are ordered to pursue the group to Shanghai and stop whatever they are up to. Hashimoto rushes around like a mad dog and Jung-Chool decides to go right up and meet the head of the resistance at his cover pottery factory.

As with several recent Korean movies there is a significant portion of the movie set on a train with the best scenes in the movie taking place in this scene. I particularly liked the breaking of tension in one scene with a baby’s shitty bum. Considering the torture scenes that happen later in the movie it is a welcome relief. Also I have heard that in the slapping scene where Hashimoto is admonishing his agents for letting people get aware there were 28 slaps in one scene, meant to be more than Takeshi Katano’s Violent Cop.

Once the group gets back to Korea the action ramps up considerably with them having to fight their way through the train station and Jung-Chool coming to their aid even though he has been told to do so and appears to be on the side of the Japanese.

As has been said in at least one other review it does feel strange to cheer for an act of terrorism in a film but the scene perfectly manipulates you into doing it with Bolero playing and the pacing and even having a character toast another just before the climax.

I have enjoyed this director’s other work in the past including the Quiet Family, the Foul King, A Bittersweet Life and the Good, the bad and the weird. I have not seen a Tale of Two Sisters and I Saw the Devil.

As Park Chan-Wook and Bong Joon-Ho tend to do he uses a lot of the same cast in his movies such as Song Kang-Ho so you know they will put in a good performance and I am a sucker for movies with that particular actor in them ever since Joint Security Area.

What I also enjoyed is the story being set in a World War II area of operations that has not been covered as much as Europe. There are many more European war stories it seems but not as many ones told from the perspective of non-western countries. Also it is a break from Korean war films as they always seem to do good business in South Korea but there is a quite a lot of them.

This movie is getting a bit more of a wider release and I would recommend it people who like war movies and also spy thrillers.

Yes, Godzilla has returned. No, it is not like any other Godzilla movie up until now. After producing Final Wars for Godzilla’s 50th anniversary Toho decided to rest the franchise for 10 years and even destroyed some sets to ensure this.
This movie can be considered Toho’s reboot of their franchise and marks the beginning of a new era of movies from the studio with a separate continuity to the Showa, Heisei and Millennium series. Even more confusing the recent US remake is also separate and is going to continue off on its own storyline.

How this movie is different is that it mainly concentrates on Godzilla as if it is a natural disaster being managed by various Japanese government agencies so you see everything from their point of view as they react to it and manage disaster recovery and trying to counteract the monster.

There are a lot of different ministers introduced, but the closest to main characters would be Rando Yaguchi (Hiroki Hasegawa) a junior advisor who ends up leading the anti-Godzilla taskforce and sassy US ambassador Kayoko Ann Patterson (Satomi Ishihara). In any other movie there would be a love story between the two but it is barely even considered here.
While there are a lot of meetings in the movie you at least get to see Godzilla earlier than the 2014 movie. He looks nothing like you would remember but to give away what it looks like when you first see the monster would ruin the surprise. It sure does look goofy looking.

Goofy-looking or not upon coming ashore the monster leaves a trail of destruction and causes many deaths, there is an attempt made to attack the monster, but it has to be stopped at the last minute due to civilians. The monster then returns to the sea.

The USA ends up getting involved but many in the Japanese government do not think they have their best interests at heart and the sassy Japanese ambassador has trouble getting her point across with the government officials. The leader of the ant-Godzilla taskforce is a lot more receptive to her and they end up working together.

There is a lot of planning and meetings and these culminate when Godzilla reappears having grown in size and the self-defence force tries to stop it from advancing on Tokyo and fails. Not like they did not try as they attack it with three waves of forces including helicopters, tanks and jets. In the movie they use footage of real vehicles for the scenes which is great along with the models for when some of them get wrecked.

The USA sends over its B2 bombers which seem to be doing well at first, but Godzilla evolves and destroys them easily with powers that it had not had before and are new even in the history of the Godzilla movies. Having used up its reserves it goes into hibernation leaving Tokyo in a sea of flames and many thousands of people dead.

Leaning on the UN council the USA it is going to make a nuclear strike when Godzilla starts moving again. Most of the Japanese government is understandably upset at this but agrees to start evacuating Tokyo. Yaguchi disagrees and wants to try his team’s plan of making a blood coagulant to try and freeze Godzilla. At this point it is a race against time for the teams’ plan to be carried out before Tokyo is destroyed for good. I am not going to reveal which plan succeeds or fails as that is half the fun.

This is not a movie for those people who complain “when are they going to get to the fireworks factory” you have to have a high tolerance of people in meetings and a lot of ancillary characters being introduced and discarded.
I did like the anti-Godzilla task force as Yaguchi himself says they are a bunch of “freaks and rejects” and he wants people with strong opinions and who have no qualms of expressing them. The group ends up working so hard that the cleaning staff feels sorry for them and brings them food and the other staff start complaining that Yaguchi smells.

The senior government ministers are a bunch of senior Japanese actors who I mostly did not recognise apart from Jun Kunimura as Chief of Staff who was recently in the Korean movie the Wailing. The older actors did have a lot of gravitas especially the Prime Minister Ren Ohsugi.

The monster effects seemed to be a combination of suit work and CGI and you could not really tell the difference between the two as they were so well integrated. I did like seeing actual models be destroyed like in the old days and there was some clever use of infrastructure with trains being used as weapons in one sequence.

The original music for the series also makes a cameo during some scenes, but if you want to hear the full tunes wait for the end credits where they play in full.

While the Neon Genesis Evangelion fans will soon be online posting comparisons in shots and so forth, there are quite a few here. In the NGE TV show the EVA units could only operate for five minutes due to their internal battery and the rest of the episode was spent building up to it. The same is the case here. The evolving state of Godzilla does remind me of the Angels in some ways as they were different each time as they changed after each one was defeated.

The previous short by the two directors the Giant God Warrior Appears in Tokyo is the direct predecessor to this movie and well worth watching.

While there was space left in the resolution of the movie for sequels it may not be by the same directors or even with the same set of characters. It was great to see Godzilla back in Japan but if you prefer more action in your Godzilla movies then I would recommend an earlier film in the series.

Greta (Bethany Whitmore) has started in a new school and is not having a good time, the one good thing is that fellow outcast Elliott (Harrison Feldman) decided he wanted to be friends and comes back to visit after school, much to the surprise of Greta’s mum. During dinner that night Elliot comes up with the idea of Greta having a big 15th birthday party, but she isn’t on board with the idea. Her mum has other ideas and ends up inviting her entire year level at school, including the group of girls who hate her guts for no reason.

Greta lashes out at her mum, but eventually relents after her dad talks to her and she does not want to hurt her mum’s feelings.

The party turns out to be more strange than you would expect with people dancing through the door and someone gifting Schrödinger’s cat. When the mean girls turn up and give a really nasty present, Greta has to retreat back to her room and ends up falling asleep, a common occurrence after high emotion.

I don’t want to give away what happens in the dream but it is quite fun and appears at first to be the same party with some differences, but quickly becomes a vision quest where Greta must get back her music box from “the girl with the tiny hands”. It reminded me of the Labyrinth somewhat as there are fantasy versions of Greta’s mum and dad she encounters in the fantasy world and even a hero figure in the form of Huldra who guides her on the quest and finally helps her fight for herself.

I really enjoyed this movie as it was quite fun and had a lot of excellent situations and characters I feel like I want to visit again. Some of the dialog scenes during the school scenes were a bit awkward as we can all recall something similar in high school.

All the costumes were on point especially the ones the party guests wore. During the dream sequence it was even more so with the fantasy characters having the look of being homemade but still out of place in the normal world.

The original story is a stage play and the movie does keep a lot of the stage elements but I think it benefits from this as it makes it unique and something you would not normally see.

I did like the scene with the Chinese as it reminded me of the Women’s Weekly Chinese Cook Book that was released in 1978 and ingredients such as capsicum were hard to get at the time. Greta’s mum dressing up to serve the food and Elliot having training chopsticks also were nice points of this scene.

I also liked the bucket of chicken being used as a prop as were the other things like the basketball, the wall girl with the movie title and other bits and pieces in the movie including things going on in the background you have to watch out for or you will miss.

I did enjoy the performances of all the actors including the mum and dad with the dad Conrad (Matthew Whittet) wanting to crack jokes and look after his daughter and mum Janet (Amber McMahon) wanting her to come out of her shell. She is also the trendy mum and does not want her kids to be squares.

Heaps of music in this and well used including the French pop star who turns up in the dream sequence. I did enjoy the dance scenes and have recommended them to people who like watching them.

The movie may only be short but I hardly noticed as there was so much going on. I would recommend it to anyone who likes movies that are a bit left of centre and coming of age stories with a difference.

Set on the KTX express train that you can get from Seoul to Busan a busy futures trader Woo Seok (Yoo Gong) and his daughter Soo-an (Kim Soo-an) get a train down to her separated mother in Busan on her birthday when the girl threatens to go by herself.

It is well established that the dad is very busy and he even gets her the same present for her birthday that she has already due to not knowing enough about her. The girl’s grandmother looks after her during the day, but the girl pines after her mother.

On the way to the train they come across emergency services attending a large blaze, but other than that things seem very quiet.

Arriving at the train we meet the other main characters including a newlywed couple with a brawny man and pregnant woman, a high school baseball team, a high powered business men, an elderly daughter and her mother and other passengers. Everything seems normal until some people run onto the train at the last minute and the daughter sees someone get jumped but the train moves off too fast.

After some passengers complain about a “weirdo” in one of the toilets they find a homeless man babbling about everyone being killed. At the other end of the train a woman goes into a fit and is attended by a train conductor, only to get attacked herself and start off the infection.

News reports are confusing telling of riots and the futures trader gets updates via his phone, but falls asleep and his daughter wanders off looking for a free toilet.

Once the attacks begin on the passengers there is no way to fight them in such close quarters so the best people can do is run away and lock the door. They also find out if the zombies lose sight of people they will stop attacking so they cover the window.

The train driver is in touch via the intercom and radios with the conductor, but is having trouble getting in touch with base. He is told they are to stop at the next main station and the army will take care of them. Of course this is the worst thing they could do and things take off from there growing even more desperate as not everyone gets back on the train in the same spot, having be cut off from the main passengers by zombie filled carriages.

Everything gets more desperate towards the end and no one seems really to be safe in this film. People only looking after themselves and making the people who escaped through the zombies go off by themselves end up sealing their own fate. The young girl wonders to her dad why you can’t live your life helping other people when he tells her she has to look after himself.

The zombies are a mindless rolling wave of violence in this movie and the incubation period of the infection tends to change depending on the requirements of the plot.

The weapons used in the movie are what you could find on a train, with an extra riot shield and baton they pick up at one of the stops. This film has one of the best “arm yourself for battle” scenes I can remember in recent history. Having thick packing tape on your forearms guards against bites and the characters remember to take off any coats of clothing that can be grabbed.

They don’t just go in swinging either, they have to use tactics such as timing when tunnels are coming up due to the zombies vision being based on movement and then going after sounds by throwing things away from them. They lock the door at the end of each carriage as the zombies can’t open it.

Due to unavoidable circumstances the train eventually has to stop, leading to a final confrontation and everything up in the air. God bless diesel locomotives, is there nothing they can’t do?

It is an excellent horror action thriller movie, but different in tone to most Hollywood versions of the same story. Due to not having much access to guns there is always a danger of someone getting bitten and people are prone to being very emotional and crying that they could not save people.

There is an undercurrent of the government not knowing what it is doing as the futures trader’s inside tip of being rescued goes awry as the big rescue does not turn out that way.

This movie has been a big hit in Korea and also screened at several film festivals including the Korean Film Festival in Australia. As far as I know it has only screened with Seoul Station at MIFF.

This is the director’s first live action film but you could not really tell as it seems to be well put together and runs along at a good pace.

The little girl is the heart of the film even though her crying does get annoying towards the end. Kind of sucked the big muscly dude did not get more screen time, but he did get a good send-off holding off a swarm of zombies allowing his wife and the other passengers to escape.

There is scope of a sequel in the story, I would like to see “Return ticket to Seoul” where they send Thomas the Tank engine back up the line armed with machine guns and rocket launchers.

Set 24 hours before the events of Train to Busan this is the story of the initial zombie outbreak and the people who try to survive it. Being a prequel you already know the ending is not going to be good, but you have to keep watching to see how long the people will survive for.

This film was made concurrently with Train to Busan but released after it. I wouldn’t say it was necessary to watch this movie before the other movie but it does give a back story to the initial outbreak and how it managed to spread so far.

The initial infected person is a homeless person and his brother has a lot of trouble getting treatment for him as people just seemed annoyed by him. When he finally does get help it is too late and the body is missing when they go back to get it.

A young woman and her boyfriend living in a cheap hotel have a break up over the boyfriend pimping her out to make the rent. Angry Dad finds her ad online and is on the trail. The woman storms off and turns off her phone.

The zombies attacking the train station is confused with homeless people making too much noise by authorities. The young woman gets caught up in the fleeing homeless and ends up stranded in the holding cell of a local police station surrounded by zombies.

Angry dad and the boyfriend go back to the hotel, only to be attacked by zombies and have to escape via the roof. Angry dad manages to bully the boyfriend into doing what they need to get out and back to the car.

Things get progressively worse as the night goes on and even the arrival of the authorities does not help as they completely misread the situation and even are responsible for a large amount of survivors being killed by not letting them escape.

It is a downer ending but as good as it can be in the circumstances. Someone turns out to have been lying all along just to get people to do what he wants. There was an audible “Nooooooooooo!” in the screening I saw it at when it was revealed what was going to happen to one of the main characters.

It is a very unique animation style, almost reminding me of roto scoping in some places. This is not a kid’s film as it is very violent with a lot of zombies biting people and violence.

I would recommend this film if you have already seen Train to Busan and want to see a further extension of the story.

Two mermaids named Silver and Golden are found by a group of musicians having a drink by the river and recruited to work in a nightclub as part of their act. Although Silver (Marta Mazurek) is happy to go along with working in the club, Golden (Michalina Olszanska) still lusts after the hearts of humans as that what they live on usually. This causes a lot of trouble with their working conditions and one of the mermaids falls for the bass player. They can also communicate with each other telepathically and have the power of sirens.

While this is a retelling of the little mermaid story, it is more of the Old Testament version with moments of extreme gore. While not a full on horror movie there are times when the mermaids grow sharp teeth and attack people and one of them is fully sawed in half at one point.

This movie is a musical and does have dance numbers. There used to be a whole genre of Eastern European Communist musicals back during the Cold War that are available online if you look for them.

While the film does have elements of camp and comedy it is not really a funny more or a fun gory romp. It is more of a serious story in the mode of an allegory on love and what people are willing to give up to find love.

The story is set in the 1980s and does manage to keep with this area rather well with no real clangers I can see with the costumes or hair.

The two actresses playing the mermaids walk around nude for a lot of the film but for some reason they do not have functional genitalia while in human form “like a Barbie doll” it is described and when they have tails there is just a slit in the tail (I will refrain from jokes about fish fingers).

The sexuality of the mermaids has a question mark over it as one of them does have sex with a female police officer and they kiss each other with tongues whilst on stage. They are not really fully regarded as “human” by either themselves or the other characters. Even their merman friend said they are “only on holiday” in the human world.

There is a lot of music in the movie and dance numbers. A lot of the plot development happens during the songs also. The soundtrack can be found on iTunes and Spotify.

I would recommend this movie if you liked the Little Mermaid story but want to see a different darker version of the story and also enjoy movies with musical numbers.